


is it better to speak or to die?

by orphan_account



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Canon Compliant, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Falling In Love, Feels, Fix-It, Fluff, Happy Ending, Is It Better To Speak Or To Die, Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Marriage, Married Couple, Married Life, Memories, Post-Canon, Reading Aloud, Short & Sweet, Summer Love, Summer Romance, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-02-28 20:55:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13279716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Lyle leaned forwards in his chair, still smiling. That breezy smile on his face, knowing, always knowing, “so, does he speak?”Elio looked up at him and then at the man standing in the kitchen with his mother.Laughing with her, captured beautifully in the morning sunlight. Eyes bright, smile radiant. Face golden. Elio’s heart raced.He looked down at the golden ring on his left hand and smiled, tracing the edge of it, watched as it glinted in the sunlight.Then, with a smile, “he does.”Sequel to:keep me by your sideandwe'll be looking for sunlight, or the headlights (till our wide eyes burn blind).





	is it better to speak or to die?

**Author's Note:**

> Helllllooooo xD I'm back with a short fic! I've been gone for a while I know. I'm sorry, but I needed a little break from writing. I hope this is a nice enough, thank you for waiting for me and being so patient! You're all the best, I love every one of you! 
> 
> Notes: 
> 
> 1\. I'm going by the film's timeline, meaning that in 1983, Elio is 17 meaning he was born in 1966, whereas the book's timeline is a little later, in 1987, meaning he was born in 1970. Oliver, then was born in 1959 (film) or 1963 (book).
> 
> 2\. Using this in mind, this would mean Elio is 51 and Oliver is 58 by the time they get married. When they go to Denmark in 1989, Elio is 23 and Oliver is 30.
> 
> 3\. This takes place 37 years later (after their first meeting), to bring us to 2020, three years after my last fic. The book's present is 2007, twenty years after Elio and Oliver meet, so if I were to follow the book's timeline, it would take 30 years to catch up to 2017 and then an added three. 
> 
> 4\. Here, Elio's parents are in their early 80's.
> 
> 5\. It's implied that Lyle is suffering from memory loss in his old age. I don't explicitly say what the cause is, and I really hope that this implication does not offend anyone. If anything is wrong or offensive, please let me know!

* * *

Elio looked at his father.

He was older, going grey and the distant look in his eyes often worried Elio. He had always looked upon his father as indestructible, a wise intelligent and admirable man who could do no wrong or have wrong done to him, for he would not allow it. The same with his mother, a beautiful, worldly woman who’s way with words often shielded him from nightmares. And yet, old age had come for them both. Except, while it had crept on his mother and had not in many ways hindered his mother’s life, it had taken his father’s memories.

Or at least some of the time.

Some days it was as if his father hadn’t aged at all. And other days, his father didn’t remember how old he was. Some days, he forgot his childhood best friend and other days the day he met his wife. Some days he forgot the summer months with Oliver or the other students that had come to visit. And some days, he remembered it all.

Still, Elio worried, of course he worried.

“Stop worrying about me,” Lyle said, smiling. Elio found himself smiling back. In the sunlight of the morning, Elio could see the man his father had been, how he had looked and talked and walked. Sure, he was the same man, but now he was old with age and time.

“I’m not,” Elio replied, shaking his head. He tried to smile as his father did.

“Continue reading then,” Lyle smiled, “I want to know what happens next.” He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. Elio watched the rays of the golden sun dance across his father’s face.

A perfect still.

Elio wished he could paint in moments like this, to capture his father’s eyes, his mother’s smile, Oliver’s laugh, for the times when he felt alone or needed solace from the loudness that was his life.

Elio smiled, and continued to read, “Elliot did not know when he had started to feel the butterflies or the warmth stirring in his belly. But Elliot wanted more of it. He wanted to bask in its touch and drown in its kiss. The need for it to consume him was almost far too powerful.”

Elio was reading a chapter of a novel that he had written and published, inspired by his upbringing and his summer Oliver and _The Heptameron_ with its question _is it better to speak or to die?_ His novel was a collection of short stories, each chapter featuring a month of the year and a story of a different couple in each month. And each chapter dealt with the same question: _Is it better to speak or to die?_

The month he was currently reading was June.

“There was a time when the spark of love or lust had not touched him. Had not even entered his mind. The days of youth when Elliot was carefree from his feelings and attachments. Distant. Able to move on and let go of the many people who walked through his life. Able to forget their faces and their eyes and their smiles and laughs, able to reminisce and smile when their letters came but nothing more.

But with him, oh with _him_ , that was not the case. He came in the heat of a blistering summer. With the golden sunlight behind him and his baggy shirts and his adorable dancing moves. He came with his intellectual voice and love of books and music and art and his carefree ability to brush Elliot off. That is, until they fell unavoidably, irresistibly in love.

His name was Thomas. He was a graduate student and hoping to publish his anthology of poetry and had come to stay with Elliot’s family, as Elliot’s father was a publisher and took on an aspiring writer each summer to mentor.

Thomas was tall and beautiful. Blond hair and blue eyed, freckled. He had a bright smile, a smile that made Elliot’s heart pound. Made his skin tingle. From the moment he laid eyes on Thomas, Elliot knew that this man was going to change his life in ways that no one else had.”

Elio paused for a second. He took a deep breath and continued reading. “For the first two weeks, Elliot avoided interacting with Thomas. Thought that if he did the feelings would go away. Of course, they didn’t. Every day, Elliot would long for Thomas’s hands, his mouth, his voice. He wondered if it was better to hold his silence, to keep his secret and hope that by the end of the hazy summer months, the feelings would go away.”

He stopped for a longer moment this time. His father had a smile on his face when Elio looked up. Elio was taken back to when he’d been a teenager and his father had talked to him about Oliver when he left. That was over thirty-four years ago, he was fifty-four and had been officially married to Oliver for three years, though they had been together for a lifetime it seemed.

He was older than his father had been at the time of his and Oliver’s first meeting.

The world had changed vastly in those years and looking around his old childhood summer house, Elio wondered if his younger self was still there. Still within the walls and floors and sheets, the days spent out at the pool, riding bikes into town and falling in love and out of love and back into it all in a couple of months.

He could see the ghost of his seventeen year old self greeting a stranger at the door and hugging him by the end of the summer at the train station, when he believed their dance in the sun had come to an end. He could see his old self dancing and laughing and kissing and falling for a man who he had no idea how to love or how to hold.

He could remember those days like the back of his hand. They were forever painted in his mind. A canvas full of bright colours, hues of reds and pinks and blues and purples that splashed over his memories, of a time passed but never forgotten.

He remembered their old ghost spots, Oliver’s old spots, by the balcony or in Rome, the whole house and town was touched by that summer. Their days rolling around in the grass, kissing in the trees, the emerald leaves falling around them as the summer stretched on. The taste of a peach always brings him back to that summer.

The tune of a bike whizzing past or the nights where he’d played the piano and thought that Oliver was out with other women, still took him back to his younger, carefree self. A self he sometimes caught a glimpse of in his smile, in the way his eyes lit up when Oliver walked in the front door, in the way he’d whisper Oliver’s name at night as the moon winked into existence in the sky. 

He remembered kissing Oliver for the first time, the smell of his clothes, the touch of his fingertips, the way they’d clung to each other at night, desperate for contact in a world that did not seem to want them to be together. Still, they had defied that. And were still in love all these years later.

Sure they had their arguments but when the tears fell away and the lonely nights melted into the darkness, the morning still rose and the sunlight brought them together again. Just like it always had. Their summer had lasted a lifetime, more than some people ever have, or ever will experience.

He remembered all those weeks of guilt and fear and love and wishing and wishing. The ice that had followed and then Oliver coming back to him.

Just like he always did.

Lyle leaned forwards in his chair, still smiling. That breezy smile on his face, knowing, always knowing, “so, does he speak?”

Elio looked up at him and then at the man standing in the kitchen with his mother.

Laughing with her, captured beautifully in the morning sunlight. Eyes bright, smile radiant. Face golden. Elio’s heart raced.

He looked down at the golden ring on his left hand and smiled, tracing the edge of it, watched as it glinted in the sunlight. Then, with a smile, “he does.”

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: 
> 
> 1\. I'm going by the film's timeline, meaning that in 1983, Elio is 17 meaning he was born in 1966, whereas the book's timeline is a little later, in 1987, meaning he was born in 1970. Oliver, then was born in 1959 (film) or 1963 (book).
> 
> 2\. Using this in mind, this would mean Elio is 51 and Oliver is 58 by the time they get married. When they go to Denmark in 1989, Elio is 23 and Oliver is 30.
> 
> 3\. This takes place 37 years later (after their first meeting), to bring us to 2020, three years after my last fic. The book's present is 2007, twenty years after Elio and Oliver meet, so if I were to follow the book's timeline, it would take 30 years to catch up to 2017 and then an added three. 
> 
> 4\. Here, Elio's parents are in their early 80's.
> 
> 5\. It's implied that Lyle is suffering from memory loss in his old age. I don't explicitly say what the cause is, and I really hope that this implication does not offend anyone. If anything is wrong or offensive, please let me know!
> 
> I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and a Happy New Year!


End file.
